For those not following Maryland politics: former Governor Robert Ehrlich (R) has decided to have a rematch with current Governor Martin O’Malley (D), whose last four years in office have produced… well, I’m sure that he’s done something forthis state, but I’m blessed if I can think of anything in particular. OK, the unemployment rate has doubled, as has the tax rate – and, not oddly at all, the emigration rate of our richest citizens – but that’s not so much ‘for this state’ as it is ‘to this state.’

Anyway, Ehrlich lost in 2006 – but then, so did just about every other Republican in the universe; and if there’s somebody else with as good a chance, I do not know his or her name. Not actually having anything in particular to run on themselves, the O’Malley campaign is apparently trying to play the ‘lobbyist’ card… with hilarious results:

Travis Tazelaar, executive director of the Maryland Democratic Party, acknowledges he has no evidence that Ehrlich has been lobbying, but argued that “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s gotta be a duck.”

Bolding mine. If you wanted to know how panicky Blue State Democrats are feeling, right now, look no further. It’s not that they’re not always this transparently deceitful, it’s that they’re usually not this sloppy about it – and to get the Baltimore Sun to actually write things like “But there’s a flaw in the Democrats’ argument. Ehrlich is not exactly a lobbyist” in order to set the record straight requires a level of skill and professionalism that I thought had died with the Creigh Deeds campaign. If this is how Maryland Democrats are going to be running O’Malley’s re-election campaign, why, things are looking up.